Technology | Media | Telecommunications

Thursday, April 12, 2012

104 Million Americans Now Own a Smartphone

comScore released data that outlines the key trends in the U.S. mobile phone service industry, during the three month average period ending February 2012. Their latest market study surveyed more than 30,000 U.S. mobile phone service subscribers.

They found Samsung to be the top mobile handset manufacturer overall with 25.6 percent market share. Google Android continued to grow its share in the U.S. smartphone market -- crossing the 50-percent threshold in February to capture a majority share for the first time in its history.

For the three-month average period ending in February, 234 million Americans age 13 and older used mobile devices.

Device manufacturer Samsung ranked as the top OEM with 25.6 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers, followed by LG with 19.4 percent share.

Apple captured the #3 ranking in February with 13.5 percent of mobile subscribers (up 2.3 percentage points), followed by Motorola at 12.8 percent. HTC moved into the #5 position in February at 6.3 percent (up 0.4 percentage points).

More than 104 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in February, up 14 percent versus November.

Google Android’s share of the smartphone market eclipsed 50 percent in February, an increase of 17 percentage points since February 2011.

Apple ranked second with 30.2 percent of the smartphone market (up 5 percentage points versus year ago), followed by RIM at 13.4 percent, Microsoft at 3.9 percent and Symbian at 1.5 percent.

In February, 74.8 percent of U.S. mobile subscribers used text messaging on their mobile device, up 2.2 percentage points. Downloaded applications were used by 49.5 percent of subscribers (up 4.6 percentage points), while browsers were used by 49.2 percent (up 4.8 percentage points).

Accessing of social networking sites or blogs increased 3.1 percentage points to 36.1 percent of mobile subscribers. Game-playing was done by 32.3 percent of the mobile audience (up 2.6 percentage points), while 24.8 percent listened to music on their phones (up 3.1 percentage points).